Quick Shots: Lawmakers should leave IHSA alone

Saturday

May 24, 2014 at 5:00 PM

By Matt TrowbridgeRockford Register Star

Not sure why the state is investigating how the IHSA runs Illinois state high school sports tournaments. I’ve worked in six states and I’ve always thought the IHSA did the best job. The Chicago Sun-Times also found that IHSA salaries were in line with neighboring states, higher than Indiana but lower than Iowa.

And complaints that the IHSA should market its tournaments are both silly and hypocritical. The local media covers state-bound teams every step of the way. And now critics want the IHSA to market athletes when a long-standing complaint about the NCAA is it makes money off of athletes who it won’t let make money for themselves. I don’t want the IHSA running pictures and videos of Fred Van Vleet to make a profit the year Auburn finished third in the state in boys basketball.

One complaint

That said, the two things the IHSA does wrong is seeding the Chicago area by the sectional, but everyone else only by regionals, and tinkering too much with the private-school multiplier. Too many local regionals get stacked with most of the best teams shoe-horned into one regional. And Boylan illustrates the absurdity of the multiplier waivers.

Boylan baseball is in Class 3A this year and Boylan softball in 4A. You could argue both teams should be in 3A. Or both in 4A. Or baseball in the larger class. Anything except the way it is. Boylan has won four consecutive NIC-10 baseball titles and is the only NIC-10 team to reach state (twice) in the last dozen years, averaging 25 wins a season. Boylan softball has never won more than a regional title and its highest NIC-10 finish the last five years is one tie for second place. Both are good teams, but IHSA logic puts the better of the two in the lower class.

The Cubs way

I instantly liked two of the last three position players the Cubs drafted in the first round: versatile high school outfielder Albert Almora and record-setting college slugger Kris Bryant. But I never liked Javier Baez, even when the shortstop hit 37 homers last year. That’s because he sounds like the typical free-swinging Cub. He had 147 strikeouts and only 40 walks with his big year last year. Now, Baez is hitting .201 in Class AAA and has struck out four times for every walk in his career (273 vs. 65).